George Mueller was a man of faith. He was a prayer warrior who financially supported missionary operations, especially orphanages in 26 different countries.
Near the end of his life he admitted to reading the entire Bible about 200 times; 100 times on his knees. Apparently if you went to his house there were indentations in the wood floors beside his bed where he prayed on his knees. He found God’s promises, believed them, and acted accordingly.
Mr. Mueller’s testimony includes the specific answers of 50,000 prayers; 5,000 prayers had been answered on the day of asking! He diligently kept records of all his prayer requests and the date of the answering in a journal that people have been able to read.
…the Mueller’s set off for the United States in August 1877 aboard the Sardian…Off Newfoundland the weather turned cold and fog really slowed them down. The captain had been on the bridge for 24 hours when something happened which was to change his life. George Mueller appeared on the bridge.
"Captain, I have come to tell you I must be in Quebec by Saturday afternoon."
"It is impossible," said the captain.
"Very well, " said Mueller, "if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way--I have never broken an engagement for 52 years. Let’s go down into the chart-room and pray."
The Captain wondered which lunatic asylum Mueller had come from.
"Mr. Mueller," he said, "do you know how dense this fog is?"
"No, my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God."
Mueller then knelt down and prayed. When he had finished the captain was about to pray, but Mueller put his hand on his shoulder, and told him:
"First, you do not believe He will and second, I believe He has, and there is no need whatever for you to pray about it."
The captain looked at Mueller in amazement.
"Captain," he continued, I have known my Lord for 52 years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to get an audience with the King. Get up, captain, and open the door, and you will find the fog is gone."
The captain walked across to the door and opened it. The fog had lifted. It was the captain himself, who later told the story of this incident, and who was subsequently described by a well known evangelist as "one of the most devoted men I ever knew."
Mueller said "…I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming. Thousands and tens of thousands of times have my prayers been answered. When once I am persuaded that a thing is right and for the glory of God, I go on praying for it until the answer comes.
"It’s not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believingly continue in prayer, until we obtain an answer; and further, we have not only to continue in prayer unto the end, but we have also to believe that God does hear us and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained, and in not expecting the blessing."
Mr. Mueller’s faithful prayers brought into the orphan houses $2.5 million, in the 1800’s. He never asked for a dime and never did any fundraising other than praying.
Today we are going to talk about another faithful man named Noah who against all reason, built an Ark. And what we’re going to see today is the incredible detail of God’s provision when we follow Him.
Let’s start by looking at:
I. The Situation (6:9-13)
A. The Evaluation of Noah
We learned last time, and it’s repeated here, that Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and he walked with God. Again, not perfect or sinless, but his heart was God’s. It also mentions his three sons now, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It’s very easy to skim over this, but the order in which the sons are listed is significant.
In the Hebrew tradition, the oldest son was always listed first and received the father’s blessing. We’ll see later that Ham was the youngest and Japheth the eldest, but it’s Shem, the middle son, who is listed first always.
This gets very interesting later on, but for now just know that this ordering of the sons is important and is a sign that Shem is the most important and blessed son. You’ll have to keep coming back to find out why.
Now we don’t know for sure how long it took to build the Ark, but if you look at all the dates of when people died before and after the flood, we can get a loose estimate that it took close to a hundred years. Given the life spans back then, we could say that in our modern times the equivalent would be about 12 years. What do you think the people around Noah thought of this guy spending that kind of time and effort on building a huge boat in the middle of the high desert?
He was warning people throughout that whole time, and obviously believed strongly enough that no amount of ridicule was going to stop him. This is faith my friends, complete lasting trust in God with nothing but His word to go on. This was a special guy who didn’t give a hoot about what people thought. ... We’re also shown:
B. The Status of the Earth
We hear again of the corruption that God sees on the earth, so God now, finally actually speaks to Noah to let him know what is about to happen, and what Noah needs to do. God says “I am going to put an end to all flesh because of the violence, and I am going to destroy them with the earth.” But he doesn’t really destroy the earth, just life on earth. Some believe that he really means that he is going to turn flesh back into dirt the reverse of creation, through the flood. Then he simply tells Noah, “Build an Ark”.
And we now see:
II. The Provision (6:14-7:16)
A. God Provides Instruction
Now wouldn’t it be nice if God always gave us the kind of precise, unmistakable instruction that Noah received in building the Ark? God told Noah the exact dimensions, what kind of wood to use, how to make it water proof, what kind of rooms and roof, and door to put in it, how many decks to build. And no doubt throughout the hundred years of building he provided even more details.
We have been able to fairly accurately replicate the Ark from what we read in the Bible, and the design has been studied extensively and shown to be very sea worthy, and easily fit all the animals, people, and supplies needed for the time they spent on the Ark. The ship would have 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, with three inner decks, roughly two thirds the size of the Titanic. The peaked roof would have looked somewhat like Wendell’s new barn with a gap of about 18 inches between the roof and the walls to allow ventilation and light to come in without allowing the water to enter because of the overhang.
One argument against the design was that without a sail, rowers, or a motor, this ship could have gone over sideways if the waves were big enough, because it had no way to steer into the waves.
However, one engineer showed that all it would have taken was two wooden stems placed at the front and rear of the boat to catch the wind. This was a characteristic of ancient ships and allowed them to steer themselves into the waves.
I’m not going to go into all the arguments for the reality of the flood and the Ark, but if you do have more questions, I encourage you to visit a website called “Answers in Genesis.”
The point is not in the details anyway, he also gave very detailed instructions for other building projects in the Old Testament. The point is that when God asks us to do something, he will and has provided all the information needed to accomplish the task.
He also:
B. Provides Material Needs
At this point there should be no reason to question how God brought the animals to the Ark. It was no doubt done supernaturally, but we also need to remember that animals have senses and instincts that we still don’t understand. They seem to be able to predict the weather, when a person is going to have a seizure, migrate, and many other things that we don’t have the ability to do. God’s creation knows His voice, and that’s really all we have to know.
What about food for the animals and the people to last them for over a year locked up in the ark? Obviously water collection would not have been an issue and they probably could have even rigged up some gravity plumbing on board to get rid of waste.
They had a hundred years to gather and strategize food necessities, and it has been suggested that God could have put most of the larger animals into a state of hibernation to limit food consumption and keep things peaceful on board the ship. As far as the people went, there would have been plenty of eggs and milk for instance which are very complete foods. They also lived in a region where citrus fruits grow, so they could have easily stocked up on vitamin C rich foods and dried fruits and wine to ward off scurvy for the few people on board.
Again do we need to go into all these details to believe that the creator God could make this happen any way he wanted to? God will provide often in miraculous ways when we follow His will.
One more thing to say about the Ark. It is a type of Christ. The Ark was completely supplied by God to save the people He chose and who chose Him, though Noah built it, he couldn’t have done it without God, and interestingly it had only one door. This Ark was the only salvation for life back then, you had to choose to get on board, and there was only one door you could go through. Our Ark today is Christ.
Now let’s see Noah’s complete:
III. Submission (6:22, 7:5, 9, 16)
A. Noah Obeys Everything God Commands
This is a theme we are going to see over the winter, the absolute, unquestioning trust and obedience (faith) that men like Noah and Abraham had. We don’t really know how God spoke to Noah, often in the Old Testament it was through the angel of God who was probably Christ. But because it doesn’t say that here, we can’t be sure.
What we do know is that Noah knew it was God, and he obeyed everything to the last detail in spite of overwhelming evidence against was God was saying, and the peer pressure that was sure to be prevalent. Four times is this section of Scripture it says Noah did as God commanded him, he did everything as God commanded period, no argument, no questions, no complaints.
B. Noah Obeys Despite the Evidence
What is the evidence against Noah believing God? Well first of all, they lived in an area that got very little rain. We know this area which was in the Iraq, Iran, southern Turkey region was very much like it is today, mostly desert. He rarely saw rain, so for him or anyone else in the region who had lived there for about 5 or 6 hundred years, the prediction of this amount of rain was ludicrous.
What about all the lumber, where was it going to come from? And how many animals are going to just come walk on the boat for you? It would be like someone saying to us, that the average temperature this winter was going to be about plus twenty, and there are going to be giraffes instead of deer eating your cedars. Ridiculous.
But Noah believed, and not just for a day or so until it seemed like it’s not really going to happen, but for a hundred years, everyday. We don’t know if God kept talking to him over that period, but talk about commitment to a promise.
Here’s how British preacher Alexander McLaren puts it: pg47 Weirsbe
How many of us really believe that Jesus could return in our lifetime, after all we have seen throughout history, and all the false predictions? You see how easy it is to get lackadaisical about something we believe is going to happen way in the future, even something like our own death. How many of us crammed to do a school paper the night before it was due, even though we got the assignment a month earlier? We tend to only get serious when something is immanent, and that procrastination can be deadly.
Finally we get to:
IV. The Flood (7:6-24)
A. The Extent of the Flood
Notice that God’s destruction in the flood is the reverse order of creation, then He recreates by removing the water from the earth like in the beginning. Then everything is made new except air breathing creatures and human nature.
You know in B.C. I’ve heard people joke about the impossibility of the flood in the Bible. They say, it’s rained here for forty days before and there hasn’t been any major flood. But if you read closely, not only did it constantly rain for forty days and forty nights, probably very heavily, (By the way it has never done that in B.C. or anywhere else) but all the water from under the earth, all the Geysers and springs, and so on started exploding out of the ground as well. There was a lot of seismic activity, that likely altered the earth during this time.
If you’ve ever gotten off the beaten path in the Rockie Mountians, you’ve seen fossils of sea shells and other sea creatures like fish, that are way up near the tops of these mountains. Of course they don’t use the flood in the Bible as the explanation, but it’s perfectly valid to do so.
It has also been suggested that the flood was actually localized, that it was only in the part of the world that Noah could see, but didn’t actually cover the entire world. But this is actually not possible. First of all there is decent evidence that there were not as many continents back then, maybe only one or two before the continental drift.
If it was just going to be a local flood, why didn’t God just suggest that they travel for a while to a place where the flood wouldn’t affect them? It says that all the high mountains of the earth were covered by more than twenty feet of water, and there is no way that could happen locally.
But even if the world was just like it is today, there is no way that part of the world could be covered in water that high without covering the rest of the world. Let me show you with a picture.
You see it would have been more supernatural for it to be a localized flood than for it to actually cover the entire earth. Besides, 75% of the earth is still covered by water.
Many ask, “Why haven’t they found at least remnants of the Ark up in the Icy mountains?” There are many explanations including that God doesn’t want it found. Maybe they used the abundance of wood for buildings and fire. Maybe it rotted when the weather was warmer and more humid. Maybe it’s being hidden only to be providentially revealed as a reminder of past and future judgment. But for those who need proof, I say keep looking if you want.
B. What about The Duration of the Flood
You know I never really had any idea how long Noah and his family were on the Ark until fairly recently, it didn’t occur to me that it mattered. I figured that it must have been a couple months, but I was quite shocked when I first found out that it was over a year. Depending on who you ask, they were on the Ark for 370 to 380 days.
Unlike many other accounts in the Bible, we are given very specific dates. He was told to start living on and filling the Ark seven days before the flood came. On the 17th day of the 2nd month of his 600th year the water started coming, it rained for forty days and nights, after the forty days the water prevailed for 150 days, and then took another 150 days to recede. Then they hung out there until God gave the command to disembark.
There are so many messages from the story of Noah and the flood that are relevant for today. First of all we’re told that Judgment is coming, and we have been given over 2000 years to prepare, are we prepared? What is God judging? He’s not judging His creation per se, he is judging their wicked and sinful behaviour, their flesh, the sin that lives in them as Paul says. It’s like when we judge something our children do. Hopefully we are not judging them, who they are, but their behaviour, what they do.
But even at that, he gave the people a chance to turn from their ways and be saved just as he does now for us. Even though he has to judge unholiness, we do not have to be destroyed in that judgment, he has provided a way out even though we are guilty. We just have to get on the Ark that is Jesus Christ. We don’t even have to build it.
This story shows us that we need to prepare and God has provided explicit instructions for this, namely to put our faith in Christ and obey his commands to love God and each other. Jesus said in Luke 17, “When the Son of Man returns it will be like the days of Noah. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage (regular things), until the day Noah entered the Ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”
The prophets like Isaiah usually follow their speech about judgment with the telling of God’s mercy and steadfast love that would come after. That he will deliver us. Jesus never does. He just bluntly and graphically talks about the coming judgment and how awful it will be, because He is the promise that the Old Testament prophets are talking about.
There will be nothing further besides Jesus, he is the final culmination of God’s mercy. That is why Jesus just has to talk about judgment. It is Him or judgment and destruction period. God has completed his redemptive work but we must make the choice. Our destruction is completely in our own hands now that Jesus has come.
He also wants us to believe his promises to provide everything we need so that we don’t become overly attached to the things of the world. The reason most people don’t give their lives to Christ is because they don’t believe this, they are unwilling to trust and surrender, and they spend their lives trying to provide for themselves.
As I said earlier, there is only one way to be saved from this judgment, and that is to go through the narrow door of Jesus Christ, just as Noah’s family did on the Ark, which was their version of Christ. And as we will see as our story continues, that even after our salvation we are still sinners who make mistakes and forget what God has done for us.
But most importantly we will see that after salvation God makes a new covenant with us that is eternal, that he will never break, no matter what we do from then on. His promises are sure, but we need to accept them, and respond to them if they are to apply to our individual lives.
Action Plan: What is your Ark? Write down at least one spiritual goal for this coming year. With God’s help, specifically plan how you will move toward that goal. Ask for God’s provision to reach the goal. Find someone to keep you accountable to working toward your goal, and don’t give up!
I am going to ask you to take this one very seriously especially if you are not certain about your eternal destiny. How do you need to prepare for our Lord’s coming? This may be the most important exercise you ever do. Please let me and this church help you.
